Friday I got off work and headed to my place. Quickly packed up my stuff for the weekend and hung out with Duke on my balcony for a bit while we waited for Derrick. It is traditional that pre-Astro, some of the guys go to Memphis Blues to kill ourselves in a pork-and-cornbread related coma. We were here drinking and eating for a few hours before Mike mentioned that we had a bunch more work to be done at the venue still.
Derrick and I drove over that way to help out, but it looked like the guys had it under control. The room looked great – there was terrain from CHOP! and A-Club, as well as 6 entries into the Best Terrain competition – I think that’s a record number of entries for Vancouver! This terrain was really nice too, I’m astounded at the effort some people can put into this stuff!
Sleep around midnight. Derrick and I stayed out at UBC at Gage Towers – it’s like a mini-vacation and means that we can stay up until midnight with everyone and all but fall drunkenly asleep the two nights we’re out that way. Up at 8am to head out to a breakfast provided by Gage towers.
Here’s a photo of my army to keep this from being an entirely photo-less post. I brought *cough* Patricks display board and put some of my Ork terrain on it to get a few extra tournament points. >.>
First game I played a guy named Brian and his Eldar, on a table that was Night Fight for the entire game. Brian and 3-4 of his friends had apparently driven out from Saskatoon after having asked themselves one night “When is the next major tournament in Canada?” and picked Astro Van and came to it – I love it! He was an awesome guy, and he ended up hanging out with us a bunch over the weekend. I won this one 7-6.
Second game was the beginning of the end. I played Steve Franks and his Eldar on Hammer and Ambull. There is a third-party force on the table that follows you around trying to kill you. He set up with a strong center, and I tried to deal with this by providing an overwhelming flanking force. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me until turn 2 that the Eldar will just pick up and move their firebase somewhere else if you do this, so I chased him around for 3 turns before the game ended – Steve was a fantastic guy, but he needed to pick up the pace by a little bit. I’ve often said that when playing Duke and his shooty Tau, I don’t actually get a game until turn 3 when I’m finally able to make contact (and Duke is trying to fight a losing battle after that moment, so the game is a little weird!), but if I don’t get to turn 4, I’m screwed. I lost this one 0-9, since I hadn’t killed anything of his at all.
Game three was Err Supply against Les. Les went on to win Best Overall, and damn does he deserve it. He’s a wickedly fun guy to play against, good natured with a well painted army and he plays well too. He had bad luck in this scenario, as all 3 of the objectives randomly scattered near my deployment zone so he had to come to me to get them. My Orks did a damn fine job of gumming up the area so he couldn’t get near the objectives, but in turn 4 I lost a few units all at once with some bad dice and that turned the game for him. I think I lost this one 1-11.
That night we headed to Mahoney and Sons, a nearby pub at UBC for some dinner and drinks, and good conversation with a lot of awesome nerds. This sort of thing, and the MB trip are a good part of what makes the tournament worthwhile – the camaraderie is excellent. After dinner, I pulled out Eclipse and myself, Derrick, Christian, James and a gentleman from the US named Peter played until 2am. Brian watched – when we started he said “for a bit”, but he ended up watching the entire game! In the team, I came third place with James winning by 10 points! An excellent game, played with all 3 of the expansions. 2am bed, 2:30am sleep…9am wake-up. >.< Tournaments!
I’ll continue this later!
No Comments